Speaking Parts

A postmodern thrilling drama about loss, love, power and the distance that modern technology puts between us. The story of four people--an actor/gigolo, a frustrated chambermaid, an obsessed writer and the film producer who manipulates them all--is filmed as if we were watching their power games through the lens of a surveillance camera.

Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival. Winner of Bes Canadian Screenplay at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

Comments (1)

Robert

Berkeley Public Library - (CA)•2 months ago

This is what I love about Kanopy! Atom Egoyan's films are always something special - not in terms of CGI or special effects - because he takes his characters places they would otherwise never go. But I'd never heard of "speaking Parts" - which is a prescient look at the way technology ...Read more

This is what I love about Kanopy! Atom Egoyan's films are always something special - not in terms of CGI or special effects - because he takes his characters places they would otherwise never go. But I'd never heard of "speaking Parts" - which is a prescient look at the way technology disrupts human interactions by becoming almost ubiquitous. We don't even notice it because it's able to mimic those interactions so well. Though this is about video and film, the ability to change lives, editing the content, distancing people so incrementally but just enough to turn their lives upside down creating "alternative" lives that they have no control over is maddening and frightening at the same time. The characters seem to either be aware and complicit with what's happening, indifferent to it, or going mad trying to put the pieces together again. A lot of people may remember Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter", "Felicia's Journey" and maybe even "Exotica", but his film's are always worth the time and always a good reminder that there is a film industry in Canada that doesn't survive on franchises and "names".

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